A survey of graffiti in the remaining upstanding buildings will be carried out as a means of accessing convicts' attitudes to their incarceration. The project will study the material culture of the prison, the buildings used to house convicts and warders, and the cemetery area where prisoners were buried in unmarked plots. Our project investigates this triangle of relationships between convicts, their keepers and the institution. ![]() Behind the forbidding facade of the institution lay the individual experience of the prisoner and prison warder. Prisons were dramatic physical expressions of state power but they were also locations in which such authority could be contested. The architecture of many of the purpose-built prisons from this period reflects new ideas about the redemptive nature of isolation, discipline and work. That century was critical in the development of the modern prison system. In Ireland and Britain, long-term confinement only became the dominant means of punishment and social control in the early decades of the 19th century. The Spike Island Archaeological Project investigates the nature of 19th century convict prison. Records indicate that over 1000 convicts were buried on the island by the time the prison closed in 1883, with most dying in the first decade of its operation. Political prisoners such as the Young Irelander, John Mitchel (after whom the fort is now named) and Fenians were also incarcerated on Spike. The prison was part of the British colonial government's response to the rise in public disorder that characterised the famine and in its early years, Spike Island was an important holding centre for convicts transported to Australia and Bermuda. Originally a Napoleonic era fortress, it was converted to a convict prison in 1847, the worst year of the Great Famine (1845-1852). Spike Island, Ireland's Alcatraz, is located at the mouth of the large natural harbour at Cork. Centre for Continuing Professional Development.Sustainable Development Goals in UCC Research.
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